Research Methods Flashcards
What is a sample?
A smaller group of people drawn from the research population. The group of people you actually asked to fill out the questionnaire.
What is research population?
The people who are the focus of the research being carried out.
What is a questionnaire?
A series of written questions a researcher presents to the respondents of a survey in order to collect quantitative data. Each respondent answers the same set of questions.
Give a brief note on qualitative research, including characteristics.
Seeks to understand the ways people interpret and make sense of their experiences and the world they live in. Systematic. Subjective. Inductive and theory. Holisitc. Non-generalisable. Analyse words, meanings, conversations, pictures and objects.
What is the meaning of systematic in terms of qualitative research?
Requires a lot of detailed record keeping. The researcher must adapt a systematic approach to keep records organised. Has a looser time frame to quantitative.
What is the meaning of subjective in terms of qualitative research?
Interpretation is required by the researcher, reduces how the researcher’s opinions influences their findings.
What is the meaning of inductive and theory in terms of qualitative research?
Used to create a theory where very little is known about a particular topic.
What is the meaning of holistic in terms of qualitative research?
Endeavours to understand entirety of experience.
Give a brief note on quantitative research, including characteristics.
Gathers data that can be easily represented in numerical and statistical format. Systematic. Objective. Deductive. Generalisable. Uses large samples. Data can be converted into numerical format. Easily measured.
What is the meaning of systematic in terms of quantitative research?
Means of measuring variables is developed and finalised before primary research begins.
What is the meaning of objective in terms of quantitative research?
Data collected during the study cannot be influenced by the researcher.
What is the meaning of deductive in terms of quantitative research?
On measuring the relationship between the variables, the researcher can say if the hypothesis was proven or not.
What is the meaning of generalisable in terms of quantitative research?
The findings can be applied to a broader population.
What is a case study?
An in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or an individual.
What is ethnography?
The extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting.
What is research hypothesis?
An idea which the sociologist guesses might be true but has not been tested against the evidence.
What is emperical evidence?
Evidence that comes from direct experience, scientifically gathered data or experimentation.
What is a hypothesis?
A testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables.
What is reliability?
A measure of a study’s consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced.
What is the scientific method?
An established scholarly research method that involves asking a question, researching existing sources, forming a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study and drawing conclusions.
What is the difference between survey and interview?
A survey collects data from subjects who responds to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire. An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, it is a way pf conducting surveys on a topic.
What is validity?
How well the study measures what it was designed to measure.
What are independent and dependent variables?
Independent variables are the cause of the change. Dependent variables are the effect, or the thing that is changed.
What is the Hawthorne effect?
Where people change their behaviour because they know they are being watched as part of a study.
